$1M Check Written to Detroit Sat in Drawer for a Month

In late February, cash-strapped Detroit received a $1 million check from the local school system that wasn’t deposited. The routine payment wound up in a city hall desk drawer, where it was found a month later. Lack of modern technology like basic bill collecting is to blame according to Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s emergency manager.

“Nobody sends million-dollar checks anymore — they wire the money,” said Orr spokesman Bill Nowling. Except in Detroit. “We have financial systems that are three, four, five decades in the past,” Nowling said. “If we can fix those issues, then we’ll be able to provide services better, faster, more efficiently and cheaper.”

According to Brown and Nowling, those money errors should never happen again because a new procedure is now in place. “All the checks go immediately into the bank, and then we’ll sort out what accounts they go into after that,” Nowling said.